Guardian Weapons need a buff

[lenna]

EDShipyard claims that the damage of the guardian weapons is split 50/50:

50% Absolute and 50% Anti-Xeno for the Plasma Charger and 50% Thermal and 50% Anti-Xeno for the Gauss Cannon.

Through testing, I and several others have determined the Plasma Charger and the Gauss Cannon to be severely underperforming with the expectations of damage provided by the in-game stats. The damage numbers produced by tests are seeming to be about half of what they should be doing. This leads me to believe that the Anti-Xeno damage type does no or very little damage to human shields and hull.

This table compares the effective damages of the guardian weapons and their human analogues without engineering. The numbers do not account for damage falloff or other damage type resistances.

Weapon	Effective Damage to Human Ships
2B Guardian Gauss Cannon	35 (Thermal)
2B Railgun	41.53 (67% Thermal, 33% Kinetic)
2B Guardian Plasma Charger	42.5 (Absolute)
2C Plasma Accelerator	54.3 (60% Absolute, 20% Thermal, 20% Kinetic)

This makes it very clear why many are reporting damage that is worse than the standard weapons.

For the amount of sheer heat generation and power draw that is present on the Guardian Gauss Cannon, I would expect to do more than 35 damage to human ships. For anti-thargoid roles, this weapon is excellently done, but for human combat, it could use a bit of an increase in thermal damage. This wouldn't affect thargoid combat at all, since they are immune to all types except for Anti-Xeno. My suggestion is to buff the thermal damage portion up to about 1.1-1.2x the total damage of the standard 2B Railgun. It would provide a small damage bonus at the cost of the ridiculous thermal load and power draw, in addition to not being engineerable at the current time.

With the Guardian Plasma Charger, the problem is not so much in that it lacks damage to human vessels but that it lacks damage in general. Even against thargoids, this weapon underperforms. It not only doesn't do much damage to hearts, but it also does less damage to the hull of the thargoid than the Guardian Gauss Cannons do. What then, is the point of using it? Answer: currently, there is no point in using it over the Gauss Cannon. Moving on to humans, the standard Plasma Accelerator gains ~8 damage (a 27.7% increase) against human vessels. This is counterbalanced by the increased max fire rate, so that's fine. But, that's when damage falloff comes in to save the day. It is 1000m on the Guardian Plasma Charger, but 2000m on the standard. That is huge. It means you have to be right up in someones grill to get... what? Less damage than a Plasma Accelerator? It also has the charge mechanic, which is a fancy way of saying that you need to wait 1.8 seconds after pulling the trigger for your shot to fire. Sure, you can get used to it, but if you're not already charged up, that means your reaction time starts at 1.8 seconds. Maybe this wouldn't be such a problem if keeping it charged didn't require holding down a trigger or button for an indeterminate amount of time while being aurally assaulted by the demonic shrieks that can only be described by dragging a screaming cat's nails down a chalkboard. My suggestion, after the sound is changed or the volume lowered, is to increase the charge multiplier to 25x from 17x, adjust the damage proportions to 40% Absolute and 60% Anti-Xeno, and increase the falloff start distance to 2000m to match the standard Accelerators. This would not only ensure that the thargoids take more hull damage from Plasma Chargers, but also ensure that the Plasma Charger is on a level that can compete with the Plasma Accelerator in the area of human ship combat. Its new damage to humans would be 50, lower than the standard plasma accelerator, but with the increased fire rate, have a slightly higher DPS. I would consider this balanced due to the inability to be engineered, as well as the greatly increased power draw.

Disclaimer: This is just my two cents. I don't expect the staff to take my suggestions into account or even view this post at all (but I would greatly appreciate it if they did). Like I said, all of the numerical data is from EDShipyard and confirmed through many tests done by many people. I apologize if any of it is incorrect and would welcome any corrections that people would be willing to make (to the numbers).

To me, if those numbers are correct and the GPC has a damage value of 42.5 against ALL targets (42.5 Human/42.5 Thargoid - total 85.0 damage across both types) then that seems more than reasonable to me.

Where the GGC is concerned, depending on the effective damage to Thargoids then this is probably more than reasonable again.

The other point to consider is whether these are Alpha Damage or DPS... the later would be a fairer comparison factor as it would take into account rate of fire.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Nope, no buffs. Just Engineering.

 

[Synoxys]

Engineering would be a great solution that would solve most of, if not all of the problems I mentioned. However, I feel that will only ever happen a good while from now, given their stance on the Guardian Power Plant.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

Engineering would be a great solution that would solve most of, if not all of the problems I mentioned. However, I feel that will only ever happen a good while from now, given their stance on the Guardian Power Plant.

Looks like it's up to us then, isn't it? ::rolls up half-fingered glove fingers, cracks knuckles:: Time to start writing some feedback.

 

[Lobey]

It's the AX weapons I find a waste of time - Gaurdian is a perfectly viable all rounder and in some situations preferable.
Be more use if we could perhaps engineer some AX and or Guardian effects to normal weapons to give a range of weapons - I don't want a "god" gun - just a decent "all rounder" as I dislike having to have different situational builds and am happy to make some trade offs for "jack of all trades". Right now stock Guardian gets closest to that.

 

[SpaceScania]

Would the turreted class 2 Guardian Plasma Chargers make good defensive weapons for the Type-9? I'm happy with my G5 efficient beam turrets but I am always looking to try something new.

 

[cool_lad]

I think that the attacks on AX ships have now demonstrated why a buff to Guardian weapons in normal combat is necessary. AX ships are practically sitting ducks against these attacks, and that's before taking into account the extensive damage that they often sustain in AX fights.

Changes could be broadly made along the following lines:-
1. Guardian weapons need to be slightly better overall than their size 3 normal counterparts, with some stats boosted to levels that would be found with engineering (such as AP values).
2. Falloff and ranges for Guardian weapons need to be much better; the falloff curve needs to be gentler and begin at greater ranges (at least 2000m).
3. Give better AX damage to Plasma Chargers as they're not useful in either normal or AX combat (not to mention the unpredictable damage, which may be caused by a bug).

To this end, some specific changes would be:-
1. Making damage falloff start at 2000.
2. Making Chargers have absolute damage that is slightly better than size 3 Plasma Accelerators.
3. Making gauss cannons have the damage and penetration values that you'd expect from a size 3 railgun or better.

These buffs are also justified by the Guardian weapons having a higher skill requirement than normal weapons; the gauss cannons lack the slight aim assist that railguns get and Plasma Chargers can't be twitch fired like Accelerators and need to be charged up first.

 

[space voyager]

Give me a reason to fight thargoids in the first place.

Check gal news. There are plenty of reasons now. Enough to put any Thargoid huggers to shame. Or to just admit they came to shoot PvP underarmed players with already dented ships.

 

[Insane4un]

We all wrong about plasma chargers in terms of Thargoid combat.

I think we actually confuse FD with guardian weapons stats. So even if they listen and see our complaints they probably still confused. The actual damage of Plasma Chargers is more, than gauss you can just see it when you use these against Cyclope. Now just try to guess where is the main problem of this weapon, and no it's not even falloff 1 km.. it deal more damage to Cyclope, than gauss because cyclope Armor Raiting is 70 or may be just 80 while chargers have 80 Armor Piercing and more damage, than gauss.
So it deal full damage because of this, and the full damage is really much better, than gauss. Problems starting with basilisk - his Armor Raiting probably about 100 or so and the chargers have 80AP only while gauss have 140 - that is where all damage is gone.. And it even worse on medusa. That's the only reason why plasma so good against cyclope and scouts and so bad against anything else. I doubt that it was intended.. To make Plasma Chargers a viable alternative to gauss we need to buff it's Armor Piercing stat from 80 to 140.

 

[Faster than Jesus [VR]]

It was a bit of a disappointment equipping those gauss cannons to my FDL and going res hunting with them. I can tolerate the heat issues, that can be mitigated to an extent and 4 GGCs is probably excessive, but when they do more damage to your own ship than what you're firing at, I'm left a little bit nonplussed. I'll give them a go against Thargoids tonight but what I'm seeing is that they're really just an upgrade on AX weapons but not viable against human opponents and I don't think any amount of engineering will address that (unless something triples the damage vs human ships with no heat or power cost...).

So the question remains, are they intended only as anti-xeno weapons or not?

If the intent is for them to be multipurpose weapons, at least for GGCs, I think the damage should be comparable to stock railguns, +/- 10%. As they currently can't be engineered, so the nice experimental effects available for railguns aren't on the table and the high capacity and long range mods are also unavailable, railguns will remain a superior choice for dedicated non xeno combat.

If they are just AX then update that techbroker description.